The Biggest Classical Music Stories of 2014

he Minnesota Orchestra ended its 16-month lockout, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra started and ended its second lockout in two years, and the Metropolitan Opera managed to avoid a lockout of its own after months of labor battles. But if the post-downturn classical music world sometimes seemed to have more slamming doors than a Feydeau farce this year, there was also glorious music, breakout performances and lots to chew over. Here, then, is the latest installment of the not-quite-annual, arbitrary, unsought and utterly undistinguished Special Awards for 2014, hereby rechristened the Ludwig Awards. (They are named for Ludwig Minkus, the ballet composer. Maybe you were thinking of someone else?)

‘Opera as Drama’ Award Named for a famous book by the musicologist Joseph Kerman, who died in March, it goes not to any particular opera but to the Metropolitan Opera, which provided enough backstage drama last year to fuel a whole Wagnerian tetralogy. Labor dramaroiled the company — with a lockout averted at the 11th hour when musicians, artists and artisans agreed to their first pay cuts in decades and the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, agreed to make significant cuts as well in a budget that had swelled to more than $300 million a year. There was fiscal drama, too, as the company ran a $22 million deficit last year. There was even police drama, when a vandal struck the opera house over the summer. Political drama swirled around the Met’s production of John Adams’s “The Death of Klinghoffer.” Mr. Gelb’s decision to cancel a planned simulcast of the opera to movie theaters around the world, at the request of Jewish groups, spurred controversy. An opening-night protest outside the opera house drew former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, while the performance inside drew Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court. After some at the Met received threats, the opera opened under heavy police guard and was peaceful, if heckled a little. And, of course, there was all the drama onstage, symbolized by a musical milestone: the 2,500th Met performance by its music director, James Levine, who returned to his full work schedule this season as he recovers from a serious spinal injury.

Speak Softly, Carry a Big Baton Award To Robert Spano, the music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, who publicly backed his musicians when they were locked out without pay this fall in a labor dispute with the management of the orchestra’s parent association, the Woodruff Arts Center. Music directors typically stay neutral in these situations. But Osmo Vanska, the music director of the Minnesota Orchestra, broke tradition by signaling support for his players during the Minnesota lockout, and Mr. Spano went even further in Atlanta, warning the orchestra’s management not to damage the ensemble artistically. (Notably, the presidents of both locked-out orchestras wound up leavingtheir jobs.)

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A sign at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis after a lockout.CreditJenn Ackerman for The New York Times

Lazarus Award To the San Diego Opera. The company was left for dead in March when it decided to shut down, citing “an insurmountable financial hurdle.” But it was revived in a somewhat slimmed-down form after Californians clamored to save the opera, and put their money where their mouths were with a successful crowdfunding campaign.

Ozymandias Award To Avery Fisher Hall, where the heirs of Avery Fisher have reached a settlement agreeing to let the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center rename the building for a new large donor who helps pay for the extensive and much-needed renovations being planned for the unprepossessing concert hall.

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Kristine Opolais in “Madama Butterfly” at the Met.CreditMarty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera

Upbeat Award To the Seattle Symphony, which brought John Luther Adams’s “Become Ocean,” which it commissioned, to Carnegie Hall just after it won a Pulitzer Prize, and then mixed things up with a viral video featuring Sir Mix-A-Lot performing “Baby Got Back.”

Downbeat Award There were lots of departing maestros this year: Riccardo Muti left the Rome Opera, Mariss Jansons announced plans to step down as chief conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda threatened to leave the Teatro Regio Torino but stayed. But the Ludwig goes to Franz Welser-Möst, who resigned as general music director of the Vienna State Opera just as the season began, forcing the company to find replacements for the 34 performances he was scheduled to conduct. Of course, plenty of musicians have opted to leave the Vienna post or been forced out of it, dating back to Mahler and Richard Strauss.

Switches as Exciting as the Bait Award As a rule, there are few things operagoers dread more than unplanned cast changes, but the Met made some cancellations into events. When the baritone Thomas Hampson was too ill to sing the title role in Berg’s “Wozzeck” in March, the Met tapped Matthias Goerne, who was in town to sing the role with the Vienna State Opera. The tenor Juan Diego Flórez withdrew from several performances of Rossini’s “La Cenerentola” last spring and was replaced by Javier Camarena, who triumphed and became only the third singer in recent decades to sing an encore there. But for sheer gumption, the Ludwig goes to Kristine Opolais, who replaced an ailing Anita Hartig in a matinee performance of Puccini’s “La Bohème” that was broadcast live to cinemas around the world on just a few hours of sleep, and on the day after she sang her first Met performance of the title role of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly.” That gave her two Puccini death scenes within the space of 18 hours.